Weblog Tools Collection

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• Ike
• Uneasy Rhetoric is a paean to my hometown, Sacramento, California. I loved it, I left it, I came rushing back into its fry’an’egg on the sidewalk hot embrace. A politically aware community activist by design (living in the capital of the world’s sixth largest economy), my blog will also contain a smattering of political banter, some wistful nostalgia, and the occasional foray into rhetoric.
• CT
• hahmed.com
• Catnabbit My site could always use some more cat loving visitors, and I’ll be keeping up to see what other sites you feature!
• SB
• Pop Occulture. I’ve been trying to stay true to the whole “write good content” thing for about three years now, covering all aspects of fringe culture from everything to technology to pop culture, to conspiracy and contemporary spirituality. Thanks in advance for the opportunity to spill my guts here!
• http://www.jesseslife.com I think there’s some outdoorsy people that may be interested in my WordPress blog. I’m currently driving around and visiting each of the US National Parks, publishing a blog entry for each. So far, I’m up to 33 out of 58. I update twice a week with a (hopefully) funny story and travel tips from where ever I happen to be.
• Pundit Mine’s an old personal journal. It’s existed since the early days of b2, and seems like it’s topic’less, but it’s usually my take on whatever is on my mind at the time. I don’t believe I am experiencing a dearth of visitors, but some new faces and friendly opinions can’t hurt!
• I could definitely use a larger audience - right now, I’ve been writing at BlackGayBlogger.com for almost three years and podcasting there for a little over six months. My topics range anywhere from workplace issues to local politics to LGBT issues - and the occasional meme or TV event. I’m always looking for fresh perspectives, comments and readers.
• Kissing Bandit
• Kenneth Stein Much thanks for all the tools and the interesting links. I’m striving to blog about concepts rather than events and situations. While the readership is still small, I suspect that it will soon begin to grow. And if not, perseverance alone is omnipotent!
• Although most of the content on my site shupe.ca is ramblings about my family it also contains over 300 recipes posts. I also have alot of information I am putting together about Wordpress. These two items drive a fair amount of traffic but I could always use more.
• Rick Beckman Not sure how popular the opinions expressed within are, but my blog resides at Watch’Therefore.com and I would certainly appreciate even a tiny boost in readership.
• House Plan needed? Will draft or help it fit you! Now that I am comfortable with the look of my blog, I feel I can sit on it awhile and post regularly. I hope to use the “Good Samaratian” approach while shamelessly plugging my talents.
• Jackson The problem is that I feel I am always straying.
• Getting a niche market promotion isn’t easy. These tools could be great.
• G.M. Nowels
• Misguided Thoughts is my site that I’ve been running for a while. While the content includes my….erm, misguided thoughts on life, tv, religion (yipes!) and such, I’m also developing the CMS Showcase

10 Blog promotion tools: Meh!Add these tools to grow your blog readership. Though there is a place for tools to help a blog readership grow, blog marketing and marketing through blogs is extremely overdone. Yes, these are directed towards marketing professionals but they send out the wrong message and end up in generating unwanted pages with bogus content and Akismet fodder. There is no shortcut, no miracle tool, no ten steps to blog nirvana. If you are a blog author, entrepreneur, marketer or a new blog author, there is one surefire tool to grow your readership and get visited/read by a bunch of people. Wait for it …

Write good content.

Keep a lazy eye on all tools, features, themes, widgets, scripts, plugins, links, readers, browsers and everything in between, but write good content. I try to help people start and popularize good (and useful) blogs by guiding them in finding a topic that they are interested in and then helping them to write about the topic. I urge new bloggers to write often, write passionately and write honestly. Blogs are not popular overnight (unless you are Guy Kawasaki or Jonathan Schwartz). Passionate and successful bloggers shut down their blogs when they run out of content steam. They start back up when the muse visits again. Be creative, experiment with thought and content, try different things and explore other blogs, but be patient and write good “stuff”. The readers will come, I promise.

Oh, and one easy way to get people to visit (and keep visiting) is by being good to the people that come to read your blog. If you only write about Hollywood gossip or about extremely cruel office pranks, you will probably get a lot of visitors, but those blogs are hard to start and harder to generate content for. However, if you help another blogger get started with their hosting or explain how to fix that pesky Acrobat freezeup issue that you learned today, tell people how much you like your shiny Macbook screen and why or explain the secrets of writing good email, you will probably pick up readers quickly. I call it Good Samaritan blogging.

In that spirit, if you think you write good content and are looking to promote your blog (not new blogs with 5 posts, blogs that are chock full of content, blogs that need readers) please leave a comment on this post. I will tally a list of the first, say twenty links, and post it the next day. If this post takes off, I might make this a monthly feature.

If you are an author and have posted your link, don’t forget to come back and check on the other blogs on the list. You might find some reading material you like.

[EDIT] PS: Even if the twenty links are exhausted, leave a comment on this post. Peer participation and promotion through shared experiences are also feathers in a good blogger’s cap!

Ready for more aggressive monetization? The following line really struck a chord with me: Even if you have a “real” job and your blog is your hobby, I think your family would appreciate something more than an additional few lattes a month earned from your blogging. A nice dinner out, gift for your partner, car payment, chipping away at the nagging credit card debt. That pretty much the same idea I had in mind when I started Qlue to give a chance to the regular everyday blogger to make a few extra bucks on the side without the hassles of purchasing and maintaining a web hosting account.

How Much Is Your Blog Worth? There are two links on that page. One that points to LeapFish where you can evaluate the value of your domain name and the other points to this page where Dane has used some real world data and live Technorait information to calculate the value of your blog. Don’t break out the champagne just yet.

BlogWare Export and WP Import This plugin from Shayne Sweeney (gada.be) that lets you export your Blogware blog and subsequently import into a Wordpress blog. In related news, Chris Pirillo is now using Wordpress for his personal blog!